My email address changed some time ago, and now, I can't login to Blogger and update my blog!

Last year, Blogger made several changes to their account recovery policies and procedures, which made this subject, for many blog owners, a critical and painful issue. Now, Google is making an organised effort to reduce the pain, by improving their account recovery tool.
There are two tools which you may wish to try, when you cannot login directly, to your Blogger account.

Recognising the frustration caused by some recent changes to the Blogger / Google login, and to various account recovery procedures, Google recently improved the design of their account recovery tool. Formerly labeled

Account Recovery: Forgot your password?

We now have

Google: Having trouble signing in?

The newly designed wizard covers both Google account un deletion, and account recovery, transparently. It won't provide recovery of all Google services lost when the account was deleted, however.

Having entered the right email address, you'll next (surprise!) get to solve a CAPTCHA, and then receive the welcome news.

An email has been sent to xxxxxxx@yyyyy.zzz containing all Gmail usernames associated with that address.

Please make sure xxxxxxx@yyy.zzz is your recovery email address. If it is not, you will not receive an email containing your username.

Here, once again, we see the advantage of not remaining completely anonymous.I'm having other problems signing in
Immediately when selecting "I'm having other problems signing in", you'll be asked for your Email address.

Enter the username you use to sign in to Google. This can be your Gmail address, or it may be another email address you associated with your account.

Having provided an email address (big surprise!!), you'll be asked to solve a CAPTCHA. Finally, you'll be provided the Google Accounts: Problems signing in to your account article, with additional selections.

Recovery works best with "lost access" accounts - "stolen" accounts will differ.

Now, you'll want to note that these wizards help you recover control of a Blogger / Google account that you simply have lost access. If your GMail / Google account has been successfully hijacked, you're going to need different corrective measures, for recovery and future protection.

How would I go about proving my identity in order to retrieve/delete an old account? I've forgotten the email address used as it was created only das before my pc crashed and all info was lost. I've tried other emails for recovery but it seems I was stupid enough to not put in a recovery email.

Are there any options for recovering control of a blog (or just deleting it permanently), if the gmail account I used to create it was deleted years ago? The 3 step password recovery wizard is no help- it simply tells me what I know, "the account was deleted"

I really appreciate your taking the time to reply and for having also sent your reply to my new Gmail email account.

However I think I have gone beyond the starting point, as the procedures laid down by Google for account recovery were of course the first I used. Although I did receive a couple of automated responses to a named email account which I had supplied, those replies were negative. I have found the procedure to be circular or more like the myth of Sisyphus: I roll the rock to the top of the hill and each time find it and myself at the bottom again, having to start anew..

Yesterday, the automated Google user support service lifted its ban on using my cell phone to receive verification codes. I used this five times on 10th May and once so far this morning. (I am in Asia an it is already Saturday.) On each occasion, I yet again received a negative response based on "suspicious activity detected"!!

I have people in the USA, Asia, and England who will confirm that I have used my old gmail address for years. I have an insurance company, my bank, and a hotel booking agency which reserved rooms for my family holiday in April in Hong Kong and Thailand using that email address and photographs of me and my family and copies of our passports are there unless the hacker has deleted them. I also have texts of scamming emails issued in my name which I would happily make available, I am not afraid to make full disclosure unlike the hacker - but to whom? I could go on There is no one to give this information to and no-one is asking for this kind of information.

I will keep trotting around the Google account recovery circle - but I would like to know if there is a way to break out of it!

I agree with you, that the recovery procedures provided by Google seem circular. Until Blogger / Google account owners start maintaining reliable backdoor account tokens, this will always be a problem, in my opinion.

Blogger / Google have made some very restrictive account / blog recovery policies, in response to some very devious blog hijacking campaigns. I doubt that they are likely to relax their restrictions.

For your interest, I opened the new email address to which you responded only a day or two ago with a user name almost the same as the one which has been hacked. This morning I received warning on one of my linked accounts that someone had been trying to change the password on that linked account while i was asleep, I changed the password on that account and checked the new account. The cell number for delivery of verification codes and the password for that account had been changed! I was able to get a new password because the hacker had not yet broken the password of the linked account - unlike in the original case where I had used the same password for both. Never again!

Google sucks. I understand this hacking protection crap, but there is no way when the original email address has been deleted due to ISP or hot going under. This should not be rocket science. The recovery tool just has you going in circles. You'd figure Google would want some of these accounts deleted to free up storage space. If after in-activity for some time the account should auto-delete like yahoo groups.

I am blocked out of my 6 yr blog after an email address change. The problem is that the address I used when I created my blog IS NO MORE.Xanadoo sold to Rhinowimax and there's no way for me to get the old email back.Is there any hope for me recovering control of my blog? Thanks....

Blogger looks at a bigger picture. They are focused on improving their product, so problems like yours don't continue, as an issue. That means, unfortunately, that they won't be able to address your individual concern.

Unfortunately, for the problem, which you described, to be resolved, the account owner must clean up their act.

If your backup blog access uses an old email address, you have to correct your account information before you forget the account name or password. Not afterwards.

You have to prove who you are, to maintain a Blogger account. This is not a formality or a peccadillo on Bloggers part, it's a common sense requirement.

Why do I keep saying this? Simple. I don't want somebody writing similar to how you are - but claiming to be me, unable to use the established procedures and tools, and gain control of my Blogger account and blogs. They are my blogs. Anybody who wants to be me damn well better be me.

I'm not sure if you've gotten this question of help before but here goes. I made an eblogger years ago with an embarrassing email address I made when I was pre-teen I think? Anyway I deactivated that email address (which I am sure was yahoo) and made a new official grown up email address on gmail. Right now, I'd really badly need to delete that embarrassing blog but I can't sign in with that old email add nor a username or password cause I don't remember any of them! PLEASE HELP!

You have a righteous concern (from what you say, here) - however, without you making some type of effort, you're not going to get a lot of help. In the community of Blogger blog owners, you are in the minority.

Hey Chuck,I have one that you might have not heard yet. I'm a member of a non-profit supporting a foundation at local elementary school. The person that setup our site has left and we have no idea what the ID/password is for our blogspot site. What is the process to establish ownership of the site and then to create a new ID/password?

Thanks for the question. Unfortunately, I have heard this one yet - many times.

The problem is that a non-profit supporting a foundation at local elementary school is no different from a multi-national corporation. Somebody in the organisation has to manage resources properly, when employees leave.

You cannot have a company car assigned to an employee - then after the employee leaves, realise that he took the keys to the car - and have an unidentifiable employee write to the manufacturer and demand a new set of keys.

The local police won't help you break into the car, either. The best that they will do is to impound the car, then wait until the owner shows up with proper paperwork and another set of keys.